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INDIA TODAY CONCLAVE 2007:
CHALLENGES FOR THE BRAVE NEW WORLD


·Men die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on,· John F. Kennedy said. Yet an idea is seldom put into practice without being questioned, debated, argued, disputed, weighed up and considered.

The annual India Today Conclave, now in its sixth year, was conceived to provide a forum for a free and frank exchange of ideas. Nobel laureates, policy makers, thought leaders, writers, actors and captains of industry and business meet over two days to discuss and debate ideas - and the issues and the solutions arising out of them.

India Today Conclave 2007 will be a global canvas with the theme: ·Challenges For The Brave New World·. Some of the finest brains in the world will look hard at the future, explore the frontiers of new thought and technology; identify the next big forces and trends that will sweep across the world and present arguments on how we should gear up for the threats and advantages that will arise.

Like all great eras, when the 21st century was ushered in, the seeds of a tumultuous revolution in every sphere of human life had already been sown. Brawn and military muscle, though it continued to play a role, no longer defined the greatness of the nation as it did in the past. Paradoxically, it was the warrior of old-world empire Winston Churchill, who famously predicted, ·The empires of the future will be the empires of the mind·. Today it is the extension of the individual·s mind that is determining the balance of power among nations. Individualism rather than nationalism or globalisation is expected to be the dominant theme of this century. It could be the end of history as we know it and the beginning of a whole new narration.

In the emerging brave new world, individuals can collaborate and compete globally, bypassing the traditional chief structures, barriers and even territorial boundaries that divided nations in the past. Infosys chief Nandan Nilekani terms it ·the death of distance·. With communication now costing almost next to nothing, experts dream of a single community world, a single eco-system and a single market. A whole new parallel universe in cyberspace could usher in an amazing era of prosperity and collaboration among countries, companies and communities.

Propelling the new plug-and-play generation are radical inventions in all spheres of human endeavour. Unravelling the book of human genes, the millions of DNA sequences that are the coded chapters of life, allows us to literally play God. Research on stem cells could finally provide the clue to the much sought after elixir of life.

Yet even in this new age of longevity, connectivity and convergence, the world remains as divided as before. In this era of mega GDP growths, there is also mega-terrorism that is the single biggest threat to the future of the world, mega-climate changes that endanger the existence of nations, mega-diseases like AIDS that has already affected one-tenth of humanity and mega-poverty that takes its toll on one-sixth of the world·s population. Even as more people die in the industrialised world of the dangers of too much food, over a billion people continue to go hungry and suffer from malnutrition and disease.

So as we look at the new world emerging in the 21st century, what then are the ·magic bullets· for the brave new world? Will the mantra of market economy and globalisation reduce poverty? Will the knowledge revolution riding on the information freeway bring greater unity and prosperity among the nations?

Then again how can we live healthier and longer lives? Should we be playing God and tampering with nature? Will we amuse ourselves to death in the emerging wireless culture? What are the new values, attitudes and behaviour that will shape humanity and make the world a better place to live in?

These are some of the questions that India Today Conclave 2007 will set before its galaxy of eminent speakers, to explore, debate and to find answers. It's a journey into the future · sometimes unsettling, but mostly exciting.

Yours sincerely,

Aroon Purie
Chairman & Editor-in-Chief
India Today Group